


Linger a Little Longer in the Twilight

by moon_crater



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Boone is a good fencepost, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Judaism, Lily is a good grandma, Possibly Pre-Slash, Raul is a good friend, and Arcade is loved, lbh probably Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-20 04:26:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10654881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moon_crater/pseuds/moon_crater
Summary: Even in the post-apocalypse, some of the old ways still survive.





	Linger a Little Longer in the Twilight

**Author's Note:**

> For the kink meme. (And mirrored on [the new kink meme](http://newfalloutkink.livejournal.com)!) The [prompt](http://falloutkinkmeme.livejournal.com/7011.html?thread=19856995#t19856995):
> 
> _Jewish Arcade Gannon. I mean, his middle name is Israel. As a person of Jewish descent, I would love to read about him doing something extremely Jewish._
> 
> **Warnings** :  This contains themes of death (offscreen), grief (onscreen) and alcohol use in the background (Cass.) Also, a depiction of sitting shiva that is intentionally imperfect.
> 
> Notes: This focuses on friendship and an outside perspective of sitting shiva. I didn’t think it’d be appropriate for a gentile to write from Arcade’s POV in this situation, even if the prompt wouldn’t leave me alone. Also, I honestly can’t decide if this is plain gen or pre-Arcade/Raul. I’m leaning toward pre-slash myself, but it really could be read as either. Pick your favorite and go with it.

The letter comes in a stack of others. Brown paper, rough, unassuming. Along one edge half of _HAVE A NICE DAY_ is printed in red ink that bleeds and feathers, revealing its origins as a paper grocery sack from a time when people still cared about that sort of thing. Not surprising. Real envelopes are few and far between and they don’t hold up on long journeys in the wasteland anyway.

Raul mostly keeps to himself in the Lucky 38. Spends his days tinkering, hands always stuck in the guts of something broken, trying to coax it to work, so he doesn’t much keep up with the goings on. But he’d notice the letter’s arrival even if he didn’t see it on the kitchen table right in front of him while he nurses a cup of what they call coffee these days.

Arcade’s never gotten mail before.

He’s wrist deep in a rusty toaster—not good for much but scrap in the wasteland and he needs the heating coils—when the good doctor puts in an appearance, well after noon.

“That doesn’t look like a balanced breakfast.” He gestures at the toaster as he plops down in one of the empty chairs. He’s got that sunken, red-eyed look of being up too late. The way he reaches for the coffee pot confirms it.

Raul shrugs. “S’got all four basic food groups, Doc. Steel, springs, plastic, and two hundred year old bread crumbs.”

“I stand corrected,” Arcade says dryly after a lazy sip of coffee. “ _Yum._ ”

With a slight smile, Raul goes back to his work. He fiddles with the last of four screws holding one toaster panel in place and pops it open.

Arcade sets his coffee cup aside, and reaches for the stack of notes and letters on the table to sort them. Real mail comes so seldom, but still it all manages to pile up when he’s not around to look through it. No one else is responsible enough to bother.

He makes a _hm_ noise and pushes his glasses further up his nose with his middle finger on the bridge. “I see Cass has managed to run up another tab at the Atomic Wrangler.” He sets that bill aside and looks at the one beneath. “And Gomorrah.” He fans out the next three slips of paper with a sigh. “ _Every_ casino on the strip. Is there even any whiskey left in the city? Is she planning to open a speakeasy?”

“She’s started bathing in it, Doc. Easier to absorb the alcohol that way.” Raul starts removing the heating coils, one at a time, and lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “Or, she’s restocking the bar downstairs.”

“Well, I hope she plans to sell the stuff at a profit.” Arcade doesn’t even dignify his sarcasm about Cass’s bathing habits with a response. He sets the bills in a neat pile for her to find when she comes back. Not that she’ll bother, but hope springs eternal.

One of the heating coils is bent. Salvageable, but difficult. It’s wedged up under some other components; if Raul had to guess, he’d say someone’s been taking out some anger on this poor, unoffending toaster, kicking it, maybe throwing it down a few flights of stairs. He can still make use of most of the bits and pieces, but some of them are more trouble than they’re worth.

He gives his whole attention to finagling the heating coil out of the rest of the mess, so at first he doesn’t notice when the tone of Arcade’s silence changes. The quiet of not enough sleep and the quiet of concentration are comfortable things. He’s used to them from Arcade, who works long hours and reads anything he can get his hands on.

But this is different. There’s a coolness emanating from Arcade’s place at the table, an iciness to the air. Stillness. Even the paper doesn’t rustle, and that’s what finally clues in Raul.

He looks up. Arcade is staring at the letter, the ordinary-looking letter in its grocery bag wrapping. Not reading, and not moving, just staring.

“Everything all right, Doc?”

Arcade’s head jerks at the sound of his voice. He reorients himself like a man snapping out of a doze—rapid blinking, shaking his head. He folds the letter back up, but his fingers lack their usual precision and it comes out crooked. “Fine.”

It’s pretty clear it’s nothing of the sort. Raul sets his screwdriver aside on the table, where it rocks back and forth on its uneven side before coming to a stop. “Bad news from home?”

“Something of that nature.” Arcade shoves his chair back from the table, and the legs _scrape_ across the floor loud enough to make them both wince. “Excuse me.”

Raul doesn’t watch him go. He’s not that kind of man—not like the boss, who’d trail after the doc, trying to bandage and bind up any bad feelings so they don’t make a mess and get all over him. If Arcade needs space, Raul’s happy to give it.

Instead, he keeps at it with the toaster, shifting this bit of steel and that bit of copper, until his skin opens on a sharp metal edge. With a grimace, Raul pulls his hand and wraps a grease rag around the finger. At least he doesn’t bleed much. Ghoul skin’s tough as leather; not pretty to look at, but it’s got that going for it.

While he does that, Arcade pauses in the doorway. Still shrouded in that heavy, frosty silence filled with something unspoken, he shifts from one foot to the other.

“Raul?”

Raul’s chair creaks when he turns to better face Arcade. “Yeah, Doc?”

The doc fidgets with the edge of his lab coat lapel, but in a subtle way that suggests he doesn’t want it to be noticed. “Our friend, Six: any idea if he’s still in town?”

His instinct is to say something sarcastic—about not being their mutual friend’s warden, about being too old to keep track anyway—but one look at the troubled crease of Arcade’s brow folds his words into a gentler shape. “Out with Boone. I think.”

“Ah.” And then aside, more to himself, Arcade mutters, “No doubt trying to get themselves skewered at the end of a Legion spear.”

“Sniper on a stick?” He can’t help himself. It’s not very funny, even, but if Boone were there to overhear, he would scowl and grunt in disapproval.

Arcade does neither. The fleeting ghost of a smirk passes over his lips. “The humane thing to do would be to take that joke out and shoot it.” The smirk vanishes instantly as he finishes speaking. It’s like watching a shutter slam down in front of his face, leaving nothing but a blank facade. “Excuse me,” he says again, in a voice too flat, too perfectly controlled, to be anything like normal. And then he’s gone. Into the boss’s empty room, Raul notices, _not_ into the other bedroom where Lily is resting and listening to the radio.

Lily likes to give comfort to all these humans she considers her extended family. And they’re all happy to let her do for them during the rare times they’re not out saving the Wasteland with Six or just living their own lives. Arcade, for one, accepts her affection with what looks like detached amusement, but he never comes back from the Mormon Fort anymore without a pile of laundry for her to wash.

But whatever he’s dealing with now, it’s obviously more complicated than bloody bandages and soiled bed linen. So he needs to be alone. Raul understands that. He’s not the sociable type, either.

He gets back to work on the toaster, and idly wonders if the others have left him any sarsaparillas in the fridge, and whether or not it would be insensitive to hand the doc a shopping list when he’s ready to head out.

* * *

Raul is a homebody most of the time. Comes with the territory of being an old man, and a ghoul besides. The smoothskins come and go in the Lucky 38, somehow rolling back around just in time whenever Six wants them, but the others don’t go out so much. ED-E and Rex are content to be left behind. Lily and Raul, well...they _could_ wander the city, but not alone, and not without a hassle.

The end result is they all spend a lot of time in each other’s company. Rex flops on Lily’s feet when she knits, on those rare days she doesn’t wear her hat, and she tells him he is A GOOD BOY. ED-E hovers over Raul’s shoulder while he works, offering helpful suggestive beeps when he meets a challenge in whatever project he’s fooling with. It’s odd but cozy, this little collection of misfits existing in the same space for days, sometimes weeks, at a time. Not quite like a family, but close enough to it.

The others being around takes something away from it, not that he’d ever say so. It’s not that it’s _bad_ when Boone stands in the corner in silence, radiating tension, or when Veronica talks as she sits beside him and helps him fix things; it’s just...different.

In the hours after Arcade gets his letter, Raul feels the same kind of shift in the household’s rhythm. Arcade shuts himself in the guest room and stays there.

The day after, the doc doesn’t go to the Mormon Fort for a few hours as is his custom, and when he moves through the suite a strange tightness follows him. His posture is rigid, his words formal and stiff, the sharp edges of his usual sarcasm blunted by whatever news he’s gotten. Raul can’t shake the feeling that he needs privacy for something, but is having a hard time asking for it.

So, for the first time in a long time, Raul thinks up an errand and goes out. And for the first time _ever_ , he invites Lily along.

“OH, HOW NICE, DEAR,” she says, and it’s not too bad to walk arm in arm with a Nightkin, even if she almost takes his out of the socket the first time she puts her hand at his elbow. “GRANDMA NEEDS SOME NEW YARN. SOMETHING IN A BLUE.”

Raul goes to Freeside. Hits up Mick & Ralph’s for a few things he’s been needing. (Six keeps promising to pick them up, but the man leans toward absent-minded, so he always forgets to bother.) Lily waits outside so she can, “CHIT CHAT WITH THIS NICE YOUNG MAN.”

Raul doesn’t wait around to see how that goes. He enters the store, does his shopping and even inquires after some yarn. He buys the only skein they have in stock, and she doesn’t seem to mind that it’s muddy brown instead of blue when he hands it to her.

“WHAT A HANDSOME BOY, THAT ROTFACE,” she says, taking his arm again. “THEY GROW UP SO FAST!” And Raul has to smile at that, because she’s never met him before but here she’s talking like she’s known him since he was a kid.

When that’s all done, they return to the Strip. Still feeling the need to make himself scarce at the Lucky 38, Raul takes Lily to the Tops to kill some time. The greeter looks at them funny, but doesn’t deny them entry—not like the snobs at the Ultra-Luxe would. The gamblers stare, but they don’t linger on the casino floor long enough for it to bother anyone.

At the Aces Theater, Raul buys his spontaneous date a Sunset Sarsaparilla, which she can’t quite manage to drink tidily without any lips. This time of afternoon the theater’s pretty empty, so they sit through some of Billy Knight’s bad jokes and the Rad Pack Revue. Tommy Torini even drops by their table to make small talk like a good host, flattering Lily the same way he would any other lady who comes through the door.

“OH, YOU,” she says in her gravel voice, and gives him a playful shove that sends him staggering backwards into a waiter.

When the theater starts to fill up with the evening patrons, Raul takes Lily’s arm and leads her back out onto the strip, then back up to the Lucky 38.

“MY! SUCH A LOVELY OUTING!” Lily says as they step into the elevator. “YOU’RE SO SWEET TO TAKE GRANDMA TO SUNDAY BRUNCH!”

Raul doesn’t point out that it’s Tuesday or that nobody knows what a “brunch” is anymore. He gives her the yarn and a pat on the arm when the elevator doors open to the suite. Lily wanders away to her favorite chair so she can, “KNIT YOU A NICE SWEATER, DEARIE.”

He’ll never need a sweater, not in this heat, but it’s good of her to think of him. Maybe she isn’t the best conversationalist, but today wasn’t too bad. It was almost nice, even. Maybe next time he needs something, he’ll take Lily out again instead of waiting for the boss to deliver it.

Raul shuffles off to the kitchen to see if there’s any coffee left in the pot. The doc burns through the stuff most days, so he’s surprised to find it untouched so late in the day.

He pours himself a cup, only to find that they’re out of sugar. Of course. Now he remembers why he switched to Nuka-Cola a hundred and fifty years ago. Sugar mills don’t much exist anymore, not in this part of the world, and he never did like coffee if he couldn’t have it sweet. That hasn’t been an issue lately, with Arcade consuming most of a pot and Cass dumping the last splash into her morning whiskey; this is the first time there’s been this much left in weeks.

There’s definitely something wrong with the doc.

Raul knocks back his bitter coffee with more determination than interest, and turns to leave the kitchen. And stops.

There’s an old, tarnished mirror hanging on the wall next to the door, mostly intact, with a bullet hole in the top right corner looking like a fat spider in the middle of a web of fine cracks. Six brought it back from some abandoned place or other, claiming it would bring good luck, and Raul didn’t have the heart to explain that he’d gotten the old superstition backward. He glances at it every time he passes by, not out of vanity, but because the suite is dark and unexpected movement gives him an itchy trigger finger. After all this time, he’s not used to his own reflection.

This time, there’s no reflection to startle him. The mirror’s covered up, draped in brown cloth.

Raul tilts his head thoughtfully, takes a sip of his coffee, and drifts out of the kitchen.

In the recreation room, he finds another of Six’s salvaged good luck charms propped against the wall behind the door. This too is covered. He wanders casually from room to room, finding dusty fabric of various dark colors where he usually sees fragments of reflections.

The letter, Arcade’s change in demeanor, the mirrors…

He touches the edge of one of the cloths and slides it through his fingers. Raul doesn’t remember much about pre-war rituals not his own, but he knows what this means: this is a house of mourning.

Raul lets the drape fall from his hand.

A lot of things didn’t survive the bombs, things he took for granted. Manners, literacy, most superstitions. Funereal customs though, those have hung on. With death the only constant in a world burnt to cinders, they had to. The details vary from person to person because the traditions tend to be handed down in families, but they exist in some form or another. Things may get lost or forgotten or remembered wrong along the way, but the more important bits and pieces remain.

Arcade’s roots must be Jewish.

He walks away from the mirror and its covering. When he wanders past the guest room, he finds the door wide open with Arcade—and only Arcade—inside. The doc lies on his side on one of the beds, fast asleep with his back to the door. Even if he weren’t out cold, Raul would know better than to disturb him so early in his grieving. When—if—it feels right, maybe he’ll approach.

Raul returns to the kitchen to settle himself at the workbench. He puts his coffee aside and pulls out some scrap from yesterday’s toaster. Over the course of several quiet hours, he gently taps it into the shapes he needs. After awhile, it’s meditative. His mind empties and he feels peaceful.

Arcade never emerges, not even for a snack. Six comes home late with Boone in tow, the first time in days. He blusters in, stops by the kitchen to stuff his mouth with a can of CRAM, and tells Boone to stay behind. He’s taking Arcade out next, he throws over his shoulder on the way out the door.

Long minutes later, Six comes back with a stubborn set to his jaw. No Arcade.

“He’s staying in. For the week.”

And that’s all he says about that. The boss is good with lots of things, but feelings aren’t one of them. They’re messy and inconvenient and get in the way out in the wasteland. If he can’t readily slap a tourniquet on it or repress it, he can’t deal with it, and won’t deal with it. If Raul’s reading the situation right, he’s already tried and failed to fix up Arcade; now he’ll bail.

Six taps Boone on the shoulder, jerks his head at the door. “Guess it’s you and me again, kid.”

“Don’t call me kid,” Boone rumbles, but follows dutifully along behind.

* * *

The following days are quiet, so quiet Raul would hardly know the Lucky 38 has an extra resident if he didn’t catch sight of the doc once in awhile when he wanders the suite. The others all come and go as usual; Raul and Lily, ED-E and Rex, they stay behind as usual. Perhaps everyone’s a bit more subdued when Arcade is in earshot—the boss has made it known in little whispers that he’s had some bad news—but for the most part, the routine remains undisturbed.

Cass is out most of the time, coming back _almost_ every night to sleep it off and leaving again in the afternoons. Veronica delivers the doc’s clean linens to the Mormon Fort for him and ends up making a friend there, so they don’t see much of her either. Lily putters in the kitchen, delighted that Six has brought her the ingredients for a good old-fashioned carrot cake. She has trouble measuring and pouring, and it doesn’t come out quite right, but Raul still eats the piece she brings him, savoring the unexpected luxury. He goes back for more the next day and finds most of it gone, but there’s no way to tell who’s been nibbling.

Well, the dirty forks left on the kitchen counter are a clue. It won’t have been the doc. He cleans up after himself. Cass is probably to blame. The other likely culprit—Boone—hasn’t been back since the cake was made.

Thinking on that, Raul hasn’t seen Arcade in the kitchen once, or heard him knocking about after everyone else has gone to sleep. Fasting, he knows, is part of some death rituals, though it might be grief turning the doc off his food instead of anything more complicated. It feels like, maybe, he should look in on him.

Raul counts the days up on his fingers, though it’s hard to keep track perfectly without windows and working clocks. It’s been about a week, if his guess is right, and if memory serves the mourning period should be winding down by now.

A week...he can’t have gone a whole week without eating. He’d be dead or passed out on the floor if that was the case. And—Raul happens to glance in on his way to the bathroom—Arcade is still conscious, kneeling in the middle of the floor with his head bowed. Just like every other time Raul’s passed by the doorway this week.

He happens to glance in again on his way back from the bathroom. Arcade hasn’t moved.

Lily has probably been seeing to his needs. Raul has never known an _abuelita_ who didn’t love to keep her grandkids fed. But he still heads to the kitchen. The coffee pot is untouched, again. He stares at it, long enough for his eyes to lose focus, and then snaps out of it, seized by the sudden urge to _do_ something. And he knows just what.

Raul pokes around in the refrigerator and cabinets and sets about making a plate. A meal of consolation, they called it before the bombs. He remembers this much from when he was a boy with Jewish neighbors.

When he’s finished pulling together something that seems at least half right, Raul takes the plate across the suite and stands in the doorway. He knocks lightly, hoping that isn’t wrong.

Arcade’s posture stiffens, but there’s no refusal of entry, so he steals into the room like a ghost.

He looks at the scene and picks out a few details. The mirror, turned to face the wall—he must have run out of tarps to cover them. A fat, salvaged candle, burning low on the dresser. Arcade’s feet tucked under him in a pair of patched up socks. Raul hooks a chair by its back and drags it over next to him. His old bones pop and creak when he sits down, but that’s all the sound he makes.

Beside him, Arcade sits without moving, the knuckles of his fists pressed into his thighs. His jaw is shadowed by a week’s worth of beard—something Raul has never seen before.

After a moment to settle himself, Raul carefully sets the plate down in front of him: a hard-boiled cazador egg, a crust of bread, half a can of beans. It’s imperfect, from what little he knows, he’s probably doing it all wrong, at the wrong time, in the wrong way, but he hopes the gesture means something. He isn’t even sure how many of the old ways survived the war, or how many Arcade wants to observe, but it never hurts to feed someone.

They sit like that, for a time, in the silence and slowly lowering candlelight. Raul lets his thoughts scatter and gradually go still, like ripples on water after pebbles break the surface.

How long they stay like that, he doesn’t know. The candle melts down a quarter inch without a word or look passing between them.

When Arcade finally speaks, it’s in a voice rusty from disuse, and strained from feeling. He dips his head low, with brow furrowed over his eyes, and says only, “He was a friend.”

Raul’s hand finds Arcade’s shoulder and rests there, solid, comforting, not so heavy it feels intrusive. Arcade clears his throat and straightens up again, but still doesn’t look at him.

“Cass came to cheer me up with whiskey and dirty jokes a few hours ago,” he says to change the subject. “You’re welcome to the alcohol. I wouldn’t impose on my worst enemy with the jokes.”

Raul says nothing.

“Lily also knitted me a hat. _That_ , I’m keeping.” His voice cracks.

At another time, he’d make the effort to cover it, but Arcade seems to accept the breaking for what it is. His entire body sags under Raul’s hand. He removes his glasses to press the heel of his hand to his eye.

It’s impossible to tell exactly when he starts to cry; he trembles, and folds in on himself more, but he makes no sound. Eventually the silent tears are body wracking, stifled sobs.

Raul just sits, gripping his shoulder to let him know he isn’t alone. He thinks of his own siblings. His parents. Every person he’s ever loved and outlived, and the hollowed-out feeling of early grief. It doesn’t hurt, exactly, it empties. It leaves a hole the wind whistles through.

The candle’s lost another quarter inch by the time Arcade tires himself out and slumps against the legs of the chair. His shaking slowly comes under control. With great care, he unfolds the legs of his glasses and perches them back on his nose. He sniffs hard a few times to clear his stuffy nose, but it doesn’t sound like it does much good.

Raul doesn’t give the man any empty words. He’s been through it enough times to know there aren’t any that will help.

“Well,” Arcade swallows a few times to make his voice work right, but it still comes out a little strangled, “that was thoroughly embarrassing.”

“Pretty sure it’s the whole point of mourning, Doc.”

Arcade is not a man who lets himself break down in front of others. Neither is Raul, but sometimes he wonders if things would have been different—if _he_ would have been different—if he had ever let Rafaela be a shoulder to cry on, instead of forcing himself to stay strong for her. Raul can’t be the same thing for Arcade that his sister might have been for him, but at least he can be there. A friend, which is something he hasn’t looked for in a long time.

“Be that as it may,” Arcade starts, and then breaks off, shaking his head. “He isn’t—wasn’t even family. I shouldn’t...” He breaks off again. Arcade always knows exactly what he wants to say, but now it’s like watching a river come up against a dam; a trickle or two spills over the top while the depth of it stays trapped.

“S’all right,” says Raul. He doesn’t need Arcade to explain himself. Grief is grief. And even if this ritual is supposed to be for close family, the pain is no less real if the dead guy was “just” a friend. The spirit of the thing is what really matters. At least, it would be to Raul. “Feel any better?”

“Aside from the crushing mortification? Yes. Actually.”

Again they sit in silence while Arcade composes himself. Such a strange thing for men like them, who are always ready with a quip or sarcastic remark. But it’s not uncomfortable. There’s an easiness to it, even if the intimacy of it is new.

When the heaviness in the air eases some, Raul says, “Lily made carrot cake.”

Arcade makes a noise that’s almost a laugh. “She didn’t.”

“It’s lopsided, crispy around the edges and tastes a little like aluminum...” Raul’s hand moves to Arcade’s back and gives it a pat. “But there’s still a piece left.”

“Aluminum,” Arcade sighs. “And it’s only crispy around the edges? That sounds...promising.”

* * *

They go to the kitchen, when Arcade has himself back together. Boone is at the table, with an issue of Guns and Bullets laid out in front of him. It’s impossible to tell if he’s reading it or has fallen asleep behind his sunglasses.

Arcade and Raul split the last piece of sideways carrot cake.

“Mmm, tastes like a can,” Arcade murmurs. Otherwise they don’t speak.

Boone turns a page.

Encouraged by the sign of life, Raul asks, “Where’s Six?”

“Out.” Silence settles over them again, and then Boone adds, “With Cass.”

Which means they won’t be back until the tequila runs out, nursing matching hangovers and both in a foul temper. That Cass is a bad influence on the boss. She makes damn good moonshine, though.

They finish the cake, and Arcade tucks into the bread and beans, taken by surprise by his own appetite. Raul sits and fiddles with an old pocket watch he’s been meaning to take a look at. Boone turns another page.

Arcade make short work of the food. Before long, his fork clatters on the plate and he sits back in the chair. He still looks wrung out and tired, but there’s less tightly coiled tension in the set of his shoulders.

“I should thank you, Raul,” Arcade says, but Raul waves it off. “All of you. You’ve been...” He trails off and shakes his head. “It hasn’t been easy. But it could have been harder.”

“It usually is, without friends.”

“Yes,” Arcade agrees. “Without friends.”

They share a tenuous smile, and Arcade nods toward Boone. “And in some cases, taciturn not-quite-friends. I suppose I should thank you too, Boone, for maintaining a respectful distance while I mourned.”

“Mourned,” Boone repeats in his almost-monotone. A confused wrinkle pops up above the bridge of his sunglasses.

“Yes. You may have noticed all the dark cloth,” Arcade offers, with a slight teasing edge to his voice. “The candles, the scruff—“ He gestures at his face. “The social withdrawal?”

Boone grunts. “I just thought you were being quiet for a change.”

This time, Arcade really does laugh.


End file.
